In many geographical locations, where the more affluent people reside, the domestic water supply is sometime untasty and is drunk by only the more hardy native born residents. Others find it necessary to endure the cost of bottled water, and usually purchase the water in five gallon containers. These people are thereafter faced with the dilemma of translocating one glass of water from the heavy, bulky five gallon container a drink at a time. This is impossible for very young children to achieve, as well as sometime being disastrous.
It is not uncommon for a domestic water supply, when made into ice cubes, to precipitate salt in the ice cubes of the refrigerator, and this is unsightly when the ice melts because the precipitated salt floats around and can be visually observed in a glass of tea or other beverage. Moreover, this type water is often unsuitable for use in an automatic ice maker of a domestic refrigerator because the precipitated salts interfere with the ice maker apparatus, and especially the water inlet control valve leading thereto.
Accordingly, there are many good reasons why people are motivated into purchasing water in larger containers for obtaining individual glasses of drinking water as well as for supplying water to an ice making machine. It would be desirable to be able to translocate water from a large bottle directly to an ice making machine or directly to a faucet in order to enable one to more easily overcome the before mentioned disagreeable properties of drinking water. Electric pumps have been specifically marketed for this purpose; however, when the bottle of water is emptied and a new one substituted, there is a problem of introducing air into the tubing leading to the ice maker valve. The air in the tubing upsets the operation of the ice maker and therefore it is necessary to manually evacuate the water supply tubing each time the water bottles are changed if this disagreeable condition is to be obviated.
Moreover, when the bottle of water is emptied, the pump motor will continue to run unless precautions are taken to prevent this undesirable occurrence. This will cause accelerated wear of the pump apparatus.
A system for delivering water in a manner to overcome the above drawbacks while retaining the desirable attributes thereof is the subject of the present invention.